AHEAD of next month’s general elections, Tech giant, Google, has set up a new portal called the Nigeria Elections Trends Hub, to provide a platform for citizens to search and discover trending interests related to the elections.
The portal, which can be accessed on the Google Trends website, allows users to compare the search popularity of the presidential candidates and trending questions being asked about them.
It features maps and graphs displaying the search interest for the candidates over 30 days.
Explaining the objective for setting up the page, Google’s Communications and Public Affairs Manager for West Africa, Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade said the Election Hub is a part of a broader initiative to support the 2023 elections, which also includes training for new and media publishers on how to effectively use YouTube to tell election stories and training from the Google News Lab to help journalists learn how to use search and other Google tools for better storytelling, including data visualisation, verification and fact-checking.
His words, “As Nigeria celebrates 24 years of democracy in the upcoming elections, our mission to organise and make the world’s information universally accessible and useful is more relevant than ever.
“We want Nigerians to be empowered with information during the upcoming elections, so we’re organising information to make it easy for voters to learn more about the candidates through the eyes of Google Trends.”
Kola-Ogunlade stated that more accessible and useful political information improves the political process and leads to greater citizen participation.
“The Nigeria Elections Trends Hub will help voters make more informed decisions at the polls, and have a greater voice in the political process.
“We’re empowering voters so that they are not simply watching from afar, but participating, engaging with and shaping the political process in a democratic way,’ he added.
